Greek Referendum on Offer That Is Off the Table Baffles Voters

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Supporters of a "no" vote burned a European Union flag during a rally in Athens on Thursday. Greece will hold a vote that could redefine its place in Europe on Sunday.CreditCreditArmando Babani/European Pressphoto Agency

ATHENS — Imagine the fate of your country hangs on a yes-or-no question. The question is drafted in cryptic, bureaucratic language and asks you to decide on an economic program that no longer exists. Leaders in neighboring countries are begging you to vote yes. Your government is begging you to vote no.

Now you can understand what it feels like to live in Greece, land of debt, sunshine and, these days, profound political weirdness. The country is approaching one of the most important votes in its modern history on Sunday, one that could redefine its place in Europe, yet many people acknowledge they barely have a clue as to what, exactly, they are voting on.

“No one is really telling us what it means,” said Erika Papamichalopoulou, 27, a resident of Athens. “No one is saying what will happen to us if we say yes, or what will happen to us if we say no.”

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece said on Thursday there will not be cuts in defense spending despite current financial trouble and urged citizens to “maintain a core of national sovereignty.”Published OnJuly 2, 2015CreditCreditERT Pool, via Reuters

Most European nations are in no rush to help, and in fact seem content to watch the Greeks dangle, though in a report released on Friday, the I.M.F. said that the country’s finances had deteriorated so sharply that it would need even more help.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who called for the referendum, has veered between bitter confrontation with the country’s creditors and conciliatory outreach.

Even as he signaled on Wednesday that he would accept many of the demands made by the creditors, he pressed ahead with the referendum and again urged Greeks to reject the proposal containing those demands.

In any case, as a parade of European leaders have pointed out, the proposal that Greeks are voting on is no longer on the table, having been built around the framework of a bailout package that expired on Tuesday.

Mr. Tsipras’s unexpected decision to call the referendum was the equivalent of a frustrated chess player trying to break open a match with a daring last-minute move that his opponent considered to be against the rules.

The Greeks and their creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the other 18 eurozone countries — spent months making moves and countermoves in largely fruitless negotiations over a deal that would unlock frozen funds for Greece in exchange for pension cuts, fiscal changes and other measures demanded by creditors.

Mr. Tsipras then appeared on television early Saturday morning and announced that he would hold a national referendum five days after the Tuesday deadline for the debt payment to the I.M.F. and the extension of its existing bailout.

He said creditors were demanding more of the same austerity policies he and his party blame for wrecking the Greek economy since 2010. He said that his government had no mandate to approve such a deal, but that he would let voters decide.

His allies framed the move as a hard-nosed negotiating tactic, as well as democracy in action.

“The whole question has moved now from the field of economics to the field of democracy,” said George Katrougalos, deputy minister for administrative reforms. “Now it is tantamount to whether we can decide our own national issues.”

Others see things differently. In one analysis, Mr. Tsipras could not persuade factions in his Syriza party to support the deal and thus called the referendum as a way out of a political dead end. “It is a political tactic to make up for the government’s failure to reach an agreement that it could pass through Parliament,” said Nick Malkoutzis, a political analyst in Athens.

Other critics say Mr. Tsipras and his party never wanted to sign a deal because they instead want Greece to renounce using the euro and reinstate the drachma — something the government has flatly denied.

The chess match continued after Mr. Tsipras’s announcement. He had asked European creditors to extend the bailout program for another week so that the Sunday vote could be held under “normal” conditions. Incensed, European negotiators initially declared that the talks were over. More significantly, the European Central Bank capped the emergency loans it had been providing to the Greek banking system to compensate for the billions of euros withdrawn by panicked account holders.

Fearing a bank collapse, Mr. Tsipras returned to television on Sunday night, announcing capital controls and the closing of the banking system. Citizens could withdraw only 60 euros a day from A.T.M.s. People started hoarding fuel and groceries. Businesses dependent on lines of bank credit for imports were suddenly in trouble.

“Once the banks closed, the whole game, or point of the referendum, changed completely,” said Aristos Doxiadis, an economist and adviser to To Potami, an opposition, pro-Europe party that has favored signing a deal. “How on earth are we going to have functioning banks again? The referendum was never going to be about the specific agreements.”

“It is about whether we stay in the eurozone or not,” he added.

And that is the argument of opposition parties now pushing people to vote yes. They believe Syriza wants a no vote as a mandate to abandon the euro. The government says it wants a no vote to strengthen its negotiating position.

“No does not mean a rift with Europe,” Mr. Tsipras said Wednesday, “but a return to a Europe with principles.”

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Supporters of a "yes" vote outside Parliament in Athens on Tuesday. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has urged Greeks to reject the demands of the country's creditors.CreditAlexandros Vlachos/European Pressphoto Agency

In a literal sense, the question does not even mention the euro or Greece’s future in Europe. It asks voters if they approve the terms of a June 25 proposal made by creditors — even though that proposal was invalidated with the passage of Tuesday’s deadline and amounts to a dense bureaucratic maze of verbiage about pension rules and tax changes on several single-spaced pages.

The entire proposal is not on the ballot. This is:

Should the deal draft that was put forward by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the Eurogroup of June 25, 2015, and consists of two parts, that together form a unified proposal, be accepted? The first document is titled “Reforms for the Completion of the Current Program and Beyond” and the second “Preliminary Debt Sustainability Analysis.”

Greece last held a referendum in December 1974, after the collapse of the ruling military junta. Then, the question asked what type of government Greeks would prefer, and the choices were pretty clear: king or republic. Voters picked republic.

In 2011, then-Prime Minister George A. Papandreou tried to call a referendum on austerity measures sought by creditors but resigned under European pressure.

Today, critics argue that Mr. Tsipras is distorting democracy, not strengthening it, by holding a rapid-fire vote in which people lack the time to understand what they are voting for.

Moreover, critics say, Mr. Tsipras is trying to frame the decision on purely visceral terms, since Greeks have equated “oxi,” or “no,” with resistance to outside powers. Every Oct. 28, Greece celebrates “Oxi” day to commemorate the 1940 refusal by Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas to allow Benito Mussolini to hand over Greece to the Axis powers without resistance.

“The ‘no’ in Greece has a very high symbolic resonance,” said Stathis Kalyvas, author of “Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs to Know” and a professor of political science at Yale. “The ‘no’ is often identified with patriotism and defiance and national pride.”

On Monday, after expressing their frustration with Mr. Tsipras, a few European leaders decided to do some politicking. The European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, while saying he felt “betrayed” by the Greek prime minister, nonetheless called on Greeks to vote yes. So did several German leaders, and others.

Analysts agree that a yes vote would mean the end for Mr. Tsipras. His government would most likely step down next week, and the Greek president — a largely ceremonial figure, though not in moments of collapsing governments — would need to assemble a “unity” government from different parties.

Unless, of course, Mr. Tsipras can reach a deal and then changes his mind and starts telling people to vote yes, which is another scenario being speculated upon.

Simple as that.

Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting.

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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Referendum on an Offer That’s Off the Table Baffles Voters . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe